BAGHDAD – Twin car bombs ravaged a popular shopping area in Baghdad’s biggest Shiite district Wednesday, killing at least 41 people in another powerful strike by suspected Sunni insurgents seeking a return to sectarian chaos.
In less than a week, blasts have struck the heart of Shiite traditions and unity: hitting Shiite pilgrims, a revered shrine and now teeming Sadr City in attacks that have claimed nearly 200 lives.
The once-powerful Shiite militias have so far largely held back from retaliations — and reopening memories of the back-and-forth bloodshed from Iraq’s 2006-7 sectarian slaughters.
But anger was seething in the Sadr City slums.
Scowling young men — joined by women shrouded in black — gathered around the bloodstained pavement and the twisted hulks of the cars, which had been parked about 100 yards apart near a restaurant and an ice cream stand.
Protesters later threw stones and empty soda cans at a vehicle carrying Iraqi soldiers, who they claim failed to protect them despite a security cordon around the district. Soldiers shot into the air to disperse the crowd.
It was the deadliest bombing attack inside sprawling Sadr City since U.S.-backed Iraqi forces seized control of the area in late May. The offensive broke the hold of the feared Mahdi Army, a network of Shiite militiamen loyal to anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
“Sadr City should be secure. We are a poor people and we want to live safely,” complained 47-year-old laborer Mohammed Abbas. “How could these bombers have entered Sadr City?”
The explosions went off in quick succession, tearing through a crowded outdoor market where vendors peddle everything from bicycles and motorcycle parts to birds and small pets.
Saadi Rashid, 35, said he had just bought some new clothes for his children when the blast went off, sending shrapnel piercing through his shoulder and his leg.
“I saw my blood covering the clothes that I had planned to take to my kids,” he said from his hospital bed. “What a disaster. I suddenly couldn’t bear to walk or even stand.”
Officers said they found another explosives-laden car parked nearby in Sadr City and detonated it without incident. Six other potential car bombs also were found elsewhere in the capital, including three more in Sadr City, according to the Iraqi military.
Another parked car bomb apparently targeting an Iraqi army patrol exploded hours later in the northern Shiite stronghold of Hurriyah, killing two people and wounding eight others, police said.
The increase in high-profile attacks in recent weeks has brought questions about the ability of Iraq’s forces to hold security gains. The U.S. military has begun pulling back from small outposts in the cities as a step toward full withdrawal from urban areas by the end of June and from the entire country by the end of 2011.
In all, at least 432 people, including 80 Iranian pilgrims, have been killed in violence so far this month, compared with 335 people in March, 283 in February and 242 in January, according to an Associated Press tally.
The latest violence also serves to embarrass the Iraqi government following its claims of capturing the alleged leader of an al-Qaida in Iraq front group. On Tuesday, the Iraqi military presented the first image of the man it says is Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, saying his arrest would deal a major blow to the insurgency.
The Iraqi military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, blamed the attacks on followers of al-Baghdadi, saying “absolutely it is a message of reprisal by these terrorist gangs.”
The U.S. military, however, believes Sunni insurgents are merely trying to provoke the kind of sectarian violence that nearly brought full-scale civil war in 2006 and 2007.
“They are very emotionally charged targets. They are meant to go after a vulnerable aspect of society, to just literally kill as many innocent civilians as they randomly can,” Maj. Gen. David Perkins told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Perkins insisted the insurgents are now unable to carry out such attacks on a daily basis.
“We have seen a couple of recent high-profile attacks, which obviously are a concern. But we don’t think that’s a fundamental shift,” he said.
There were conflicting death tolls for Sadr City on Wednesday, as is usual in the chaotic aftermath of bombings.
Police and hospital officials said 41 people died and more than 60 were wounded. An Interior Ministry official gave a slightly higher figure, 45 deaths.
The officials all spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t allowed to release the information.
Nobody claimed responsibility for the attack, but car bombs and suicide attacks bear the hallmark of al-Qaida in Iraq and other insurgent groups.
Meanwhile, a roadside bomb struck a minibus in a Sunni area in southern Baghdad, killing at least five people and wounding three, according to police and hospital officials.
Tensions also rose near the northern disputed city of Kirkuk when U.S. troops opened fire after being ambushed by a grenade and small-arms fire while distributing micro-grants to Iraqi businesses.
Iraqi officials said two civilians were killed when the Americans returned fire, but the U.S. military said those killed were enemy fighters.
Iraqi government has expressed anger over a deadly U.S. raid Sunday in southern Iraq that it says violated its security agreement with Washington.